Australians buy almost 15kg of clothes every year and most of it ends up in landfill, report finds

A report by the Australian Fashion Council found the volume of Australia’s clothing imports dwarfs local production which is just 3% of the market. Photograph: adisa/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Australians buy 14.8kg of clothing, or 56 new items, every year, a new report has found, making Australia one of the highest consumers of textiles per capita in the world.

There are 1.42bn pieces of clothing – amounting to 373,000 tonnes of fabric – arriving in Australia each year, the report by the Australian Fashion Council (AFC) has revealed.